When we talk about history we are generally preoccupied with kings and queens and wars and political affairs but a large part of history is buried somewhere in the everyday existence of the society. Women and their agency are often lost in the narrow and lost lanes of the city. In Delhi there are many forgotten spaces which echo the unknown stories of unknown women of the city. It includes the Sarai Jullena in South Delhi near Okhla which is named after a Portuguese woman, Dona Juliana Da Costa, who was gifted 97 bighas of land by Shah Alam I but today exists as a reminder of a woman who is long forgotten by the world and even by the people who inhabit the area. Similarly, in the region of Narela, the village Sanoth is named after Sanno Devi, wife of one of the earliest inhabitants of the village named Kher.
While the remnants of royal women from Delhi Sultanate and Mughal eras are peppered throughout the city, even though many a time the city forgot the exact details of the queen who patronised these structures (like Hauz Rani, Rani Bagh, Rani Khera, etc.), the most well documented evidence of localities and structures named after women belongs to the colonial and post colonial periods (Lady Irwin, Lady Harding, etc.), but what remain unseen and unheard of are the unknown localities that echo the history of lesser known women of Delhi from antiquity to modernity from Sanno Devi to Shreya Mishra (whose name adorns a road near the North campus, University of Delhi).
Women of Delhi in traditional history
Delhi has long been considered a confluence of different traditions and the history of its making goes back thousands of years. But the traditional histories of the region don’t include the villages and local areas which were the foundation of Delhi before it got urbanised. The history of women who live in these villages is as erased as many of the villages of Delhi that are sacrificed on the altar of development. A very significant example will be that of Sanoth village in the region of Narela, which was settled by the people coming from regions of Haryana (significantly from Rohtak). Sanno Devi became the custodian of the village, and the village came to be defined as “Sanno ka Than” or “Sanno ka Gaon”, from where the modern name of the village is derived. Unfortunately, we don’t find written records that even minutely talk about the lost village cultures of Delhi and this information is largely preserved in the oral testimonies of the people who are associated with the community or region.
Delhi has long been considered a confluence of different traditions and the history of its making goes back thousands of years. But the traditional histories of the region don’t include the villages and local areas which were the foundation of Delhi before it got urbanised. The history of women who live in these villages is as erased as many of the villages of Delhi that are sacrificed on the altar of development.
One aspect of this local tradition followed in Sanoth village is the worship of Kanthi Devi, which is the local form of Sheetla Devi cults associated with the epidemic of smallpox. The local culture venerates a whole pantheon of female goddesses for the welfare of their family, crops and health. This pantheon includes goddesses like Kanthi, Sheetla, Lalita, Kho-Kho Mata, etc. Religion is one way through which women are remembered by society, but sometimes with changing times, they are also sidelined and appropriated by other communities.
A prime example of this can be the Yoginipura, a name associated with Delhi in the early medieval period, particularly in the Jaina texts. As a remembrance of this identity of the region, we have a Yogmaya temple in Mehrauli, which is dedicated to the sister of Lord Krishna, whom Kans tried to kill but failed. This temple remains invisible, highlighting the historical negligence. Similarly, Mihir Keshari in his research paper, reported two unidentified Yogini sculptures (one male and one female) on the premises of the modern-day Gorakhnath Temple near the Sanjay Van in South Delhi. These Yogini sculptures, which perhaps reinforce the idea that Delhi was once a centre of Yogini temples, are now marginalised due to the presence of Gorakhnath Temple, which has not only appropriated the small shrines that surround the region but also Ram Talab from where these sculptures were found.
The Unnamed and Unknown Royal Women
Most of the heritage walks around Delhi discuss the association of Mughal princesses and queens with the architecture of Delhi whose names adorn the sites of Akbarabadi, Fatehpuri and Sirhindi mosques, Qudsia Bagh, Sunehri Masjid, etc. In the same vein, one can talk about the unknown queens and princesses and royal women, who are forgotten or remain unnamed in their own structures as even scholars argue about the identity of these royal women. Many places in Delhi are named after queens, like Rani Bagh, Rani Khera, Hauz Rani. The problem here is that these sites are identified with the rulers under whose reign they were possibly constructed but not the names of the queens under whose names they were constructed.
Rani Khera, according to the genealogies of the Dabas community, was named after a Tomar princess who was married into the Dabas clan around 700 years ago. Hauz Rani was similarly named after the queen of Emperor Alauddin Khilji, who was also responsible for the creation of Hauz Khas. Many neighbouring regions around Hauz Khas have some or other association with the queens, waiting to be identified. Begumpuri Masjid (located near the region named Begumpur), which is a 14th-century mosque ascribed to the Tughlaq period, andDadi Poti Tombs (even ASI is clueless about the origins of this site; the only reason they are called ‘Dadi Poti tombs’ is that one tomb is larger than the other). Interestingly, the Dadi Poti tomb doesn’t even belong to the same period. While one tomb belongs to the Lodhi period, the other belongs to the Tughlaq period. Many mosques and monuments in Delhi are named after Begums and British officials, but most of them are largely unknown and unnoticed, even when they are associated with major figures of Indian history (like the Mazaar of Nizamuddin Auliya’s mother located near Adchini, Dargah Mai Sahiba, which is located in a corner where hardly anyone visits).
Many of these spaces are encroached upon, and their identities are taken away from them or dehumanised. Many remain unnamed, like the Burhiya mosque, and some are dehumanised through pejorative naming, such as R*ndi ki Masjid which was commissioned by a courtesan, Mubarak Begum in 1823. The conservative critics tried to dehumanise and dismiss her construction by calling it by the pejorative name, but now it is known as Masjid Mubarak Begum. Similarly, British records tell us about Begum Samru, who was not just the wife of a British mercenary, William Reinhardt Sombre; she also acted as an official and later inherited the estate of Sardana. Begum Samru’s real name was Farzana but she was known by her surname Sombre, which eventually corrupted to Samru. Her palace has been encroached severely and her church, known as Sardhana Church and other architectural marvels are largely forgotten or appropriated (like her palace, which now serves as the office of Central Bank of India and is known as Bhagirath Palace).
Many mosques and monuments in Delhi are named after Begums and British officials, but most of them are largely unknown and unnoticed.
Unknown women of Delhi have been recorded in the archives of Delhi for the construction of the Kali temple and many Shiva temples, even though the exact location and whereabouts of the temples are hardly known. But apart from the monuments, in Delhi lies a whole village named after a woman. Sarai Jullena is one such site whose history is by and large forgotten, even though, unlike the names Begumpur and Rani Baghs of Delhi, Sarai Jullena has a definite known history going back to the 18th century, when she was associated with the Mughal rulers Bahadur Shah I and Aurangzeb. Named after the Portuguese woman born in Cochin, Dona Juliana Dias Da Costa, Bahadur Shah I gifted her 97 bighas of land, which became the basis of the Sarai Jullena village. Juliana was a formidable woman with experience in governance and medical and courtly matters, which made her a formidable political figure in the 18th century. Her biography was written by Gaston Brouet on the request of Colonel Gentil, based on which Raghuraj Chauhan and Madhukar Tewari have compiled a modern biography of Dona Juliana Dias Da Costa. Sarai Jullena is a prominent area in the Okhla region, but even the said authors of the book lament the fact that Juliana is largely and utterly forgotten by people in Delhi and even by those who inhabit the area.
Looking for Women Beyond the Political Domain
It is not necessary for the women to be remembered on the basis of their political connections or public popularity; many a time, common people managed to lay their stamp on the roads and sites of Delhi because of the impact of their life or action, or simply as a way to remember a tragedy. One of the significant roads in the North Campus of the University of Delhi is the Shreya Mishra Marg, which is travelled by thousands of students every day, but hardly anyone knows about the significance of the road. Shreya Mishra was a student of the University of Delhi, who unfortunately was crushed by a reckless driver in the late 1990s. This led to widespread protest in the university regarding safety regulations, and as a mark of remembrance, the road was named after Shreya Mishra. The accident featured in the Gender Study Group Report of University of Delhi, which provides a detailed analysis of the harassment of women on campus.
But since then the event and the person have both been forgotten, and the space remains an overcrowded accident prone zone. Most of the roads of Delhi are named after political leaders particularly associated with the Indian National movement. Therefore, it becomes difficult to find names beyond the Indian National movement. Justice Sunanda Bhandare Margis one of the significant roads named after a woman because she was neither a freedom fighter nor a politician, but rather an activist, lawyer and judge who worked profusely on gender sensitisation and disability rights. According to Sohail Hashmi, naming a road after her is perhaps one of the rare incidents of countering sexism that is inherent in the naming of places in Delhi.
It is sad to see that naming of roads and places on women is still mere tokenism with hardly any thought given to remember women of diverse fields (with exceptions like Amrita Shergill and Mother Teresa) and even the new proposed names for Delhi, in the wake of discourse of renaming places, women barely features in the list. Women have been part of history for millions of years, it’s time we also make them part of history writing as well.
